Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) and Prop 63 Home Page

Issue: In 2004,California voters alturistically passed Proposition 63 (Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), a 1% tax on millionaires to help people with "severe mental illness" and to "prevent mental illness from becoming severe and disabling". MHSA is an important program that does a lot of good. But mission-creep, insider dealing, and lack of oversight, have enabled both worthy and unworthy social services programs to masquerade as mental illness programs and claim they are eligible for MHSA funds. This bait and switch led to programs that fail to serve the seriously ill being showered with funds while those that do serve the seriously ill go unfunded. A new report found:

$2.5 billion of the “Full Service Partnership (FSP) funds were spent without oversight of whether the recipients had schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or the other serious mental illnesses that made them eligible for MHSA funds.

$11 million in MHSA funds went to hire a P.R. firm that works to convince the media that all is well. They continually issue press releases and call editorial boards to extol the virtues of the program. County mental health directors and recipients of the diverted funds benefit from the status quo and therefore defend it. Governor Brown and Senator Steinberg appointed recipients of MHSA funds who represent the mental health and social service industries to sit on the Oversight Commission. As a result of this conflict, MHSA is being overseen by cheerleaders for mission creep, rather than stewards of the public purse. This is not what voters wanted to happen or were told would happen. Money is not the issue. Leadership is.

FN 2 Ex. The Oversight Commission put out an RFP for an evaluation to evaluate the evaluations. Neither the original evaluations or the evaluation of the evaluations require evaluation of whether the people being served were seriously mentally ill individuals eligible for services. http://mhsoac.ca.gov/Evaluations/docs/Contracts/RFP_MHSOAC012-015.pdf

FN3The Oversight Commission itself created an eight page glossy insert for papers throughout the state headlined, “Mental Illness: It Affects Everyone, even though the legislation is not intended to affect everyone. See http://issuu.com/news_review/docs/2013-01-03_mentalillness (accessed 6/23/12).

FN4 Most notably, AB-100 took $863 million out of the MHSA fund and directed it to fund programs courts had mandated the state to fund. AB 1467 (July 2012) essentially disconnected Innovative Funds (5% of total MHSA funds) from a connection with serious mental illness.

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